The Nation Newspaper

Category: Olakunle Abimbola

  • Of endorsement and postponement

    It is the season of commentariat endorsement.  But what has happened is sudden election postponement.  Life goes on.

    Still, the reaction, angry if understandable, has suggested the world had ground to a halt.  It hasn’t — and it wouldn’t.

    But that doesn’t make the postponement of the presidential/National Assembly election the ideal.  Indeed, for a fragile polity, it’s no good news — and it should never happen again.

    Even then, it’s no novelty.  In 2011, the same presidential/National Assembly election got postponed, even hours after it had opened.  Reason: failed logistics.

    In 2015, the election opener got pushed back by six weeks.  Fearing incumbent defeat and a lack of momentum, the then National Security Adviser (NSA), Sambo Dasuki, went to Chatham House in London to raise a Boko Haram scarecrow.

    Days later, Dasuki’s postponement got rammed down the country’s throat, via the National Council of State (NCA).  At that meeting, the NSA baited INEC chair, Prof. Attahiru Jega, to go on, if he could conjure up security.

    Yet, the yak and yelp that greeted this latest postponement, suggesting a novelty, betrays a sickening lack of institutional memory.

    It’s a troubling national forgetfulness that condemns Nigerians to reacting to about everything with dashing hysteria, coupled with vulgar abuse and damning conspiracy theories.

    Still, that is not to say pushing elections, at the virtual last minute — this latest one got announced around 2am on Election Day — should be tolerated.  Indeed, it must be condemned.  And trust Nigerians: the blame beam got switched on with blinding flash, complete with wild name-calling and a torrent of curses.

    All that is okay — after all, you don’t smack a child and expect it not to yelp or scream.  The problem though is that even as Nigerians froth in holy anger, they tightly shut their eyes to the root of the problem.

    Many have dismissed the  Mahmood Yakubu-chaired Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as “incompetent” — and it could well be.

    Still, though the INEC chair had changed from Prof.  Jega (whose tenure was responsible for the 2011 and 2015 postponements), the blighted operating environment, that forced the umpire to eat crow back then, is perhaps even worse today.

    Since Nigeria’s formative years, leading up to independence in 1960, elections here have been the civic equivalent of a shooting war — with booming guns not altogether silent; and baleful politicians, with a win-at-all-cost mentality, anything but civil.

    In such perilous setting, sabotage is rife.  Where venality is second god, especially among the unscrupulous elite, hefty-bribe-for-sabotage appears even rifer, if the price is worth the risk.  In such dog-eat-dog milieu, INEC and its operations are fair game.

    So, perhaps Prof. Yakubu’s most grievous sin was waiting too long to halt the train.  Even then, no one wants to, in a hurry, face the proverbial Nigerian bile — for “incompetence”, the polity’s latest cliché!

    But then, better pull the plug and earn that bile, than get consigned to the Nigerian electoral Hades, where Maurice Iwu hankers down as the Satan of all time!

    Jega, after all, endured two postponements (though to be fair, the 2015 one was state blackmail beyond his help), only to lift Nigeria from electoral morass, after the Olusegun Obasanjo/Maurice Iwu all-time “do-or-die” meltdown of 2007.

    So, as folks growl, hiss and bristle at INEC, this grim news: this election postponement might not be the last in Nigeria’s electoral cycle.

    Why?  Because there are still too many rotten players, strutting around the democratic space, sworn to winning at all cost, whatever it takes!

    For one, former President Obasanjo is not weaned of his do-or-die temper of 2007.  This year, he has an added blackmail weapon in the so-called “international community”, whose hypocrisy has, so far, been rather benumbing.

    For another, you don’t stay loudly quiet at clearly organized arson against INEC — a convoy bearing key election materials completely razed on the highway at Akwa Ibom; containers with 4, 695 smart card readers, among other materials, burnt in Awka, Anambra State; other INEC office arson in Plateau and Abia states; and materials for two of the three Niger State senatorial districts, vanishing on election eve — and still expect Yakubu to conjure “free and fair” elections.  That would be electoral reverie taken too far!

    Yes, INEC has its own share of the blame. But the Nigerian people should also partner with their state to rid the electoral process of political desperadoes.  They know they are doomed.  But they want to take everyone down with them.

    So long as Nigerians tolerate or even gloss over these renegades, so long would they condemn themselves to last-minute poll postponements — or even worse — with the associated heart aches.

    That is the bitter take from this latest postponement.

    Endorsement?  O yes! But first: this analogy-turned-allegory, from Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.

    It goes by unconscionable tortoise, who though stitched up with borrowed feathers to make a bash in the skies, rechristened himself “All of you”, to corner all the gravy.

    His angry, hungry and cheated benefactors would strip him of all the borrowed plumes.  As a result, he got tossed down from the skies, badly fracturing his shell, from his cascading fall.

    Tortoise, as “All of you”, perfectly epitomizes Nigerian national governance since 1960 —and the perfect living symbol of that is former President Olusegun Obasanjo.

    As military Head of State (February 1976 – 1 October 1979), Operation Feed the Nation (OFN), was one of Gen. Obasanjo’s key policies, to mainstream household farming.

    But after, another OFN — Obasanjo Farms Nigeria — became the crown jewel of the former junta head’s tour of duty.  The Land Use Decree (now Land Use Act) paved the way to cheap access to vast farm lands, suggesting sweet private lollies, buried deep in patriotic public policy.

    Obasanjo’s second coming, as elected president (1999-2007), boasts a similar self-gifted tiara: Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) — clear extortion, dubbed as “donation”, from Business and Political Nigeria, to a sitting president and Oil minister!

    Since 2015, however, that “All of you” culture appears receding, with public money progressively working more for the bulk of the people.

    The Nigerian state, under PMB, is bonding with the poor and the most vulnerable, through specific pro-poor initiatives; aside from a visible infrastructure upscale, physical and social, even the blind can see.

    Still, the “All of you” army charges into this election with snorting horses and furious chariots; baying “international community!” as the gallop into battle!

    But they forget: what Achebe rendered in “All of You” is the Igbo equivalent of the Yoruba version, rendered so dramatically in Ola Rotimi’s Kurunmi: a tortoise that swore never to return from his trip, until he was disgraced!

    On Saturday, let the majority vote in those who spend the people’s money on the people – not on their selfish selves.  That is what PMB has done since 2015 – and that is the logical path to tread.

  • Presidential ”youth”collapse?

    Four days to the 2019 presidential election, the “youth” thunder is muffled: a soft moan, softening into a baby’s sigh.  Hardly any challenger has made a dent.

    Bravo, the brave Kingsley Moghalu, and his Young Progressive Party (YPP), just received our own WS’s endorsement – applause, applause!

    But the same WS has, no less, applauded the new Lagos-Abeokuta standard gauge rail, a sure vote-spinner for the old masters.  So, where does that endorsement lead Moghalu and his gamely young Turks?

    It appears the sensational collapse of youthful pride and prejudice (to parody Jane Austen’s classic) — not to add conceit.

    Like Elizabeth Bennet, Austen’s chastened protagonist, in Pride and Prejudice, these “youths” are finding out the hard difference between the fundamental (painstaking thinking) and the superficial (hasty rush to emotive judgment).

    The “take it back” crowd appears eating some crow — and just as well!

    “Take it back” — that’s Omoyele Sowore’s electioneering rally.  But that aptly captures the temper of these callow gladiators — whatever it takes, take it back!

    En route to that mission, old age had become a curse; and youth, fresh and booming, eternal blessing!  But which youth doesn’t eventually get old?  A campaign, by its gushing emotions, never got vainer.

    Nor were ethnic slurs, off limits: blaming the criminality of a few, on a whole collective, just because you want to take down one man.  Enter then, the ubiquitous “Fulani herdsmen”, the southern media’s headline hysteria!

    But perhaps the most fatal — and surprising — for the youth challenge, is a laughable I-don’t-care hauteur, about the political environment.  If you don’t master your milieu, or even care to understand it, how do you bend it to your advantage?

    Chuba Wilberforce Okadigbo, the late Senate president and colourful Oyi of Oyi, himself once a callow youth when he dismissed the Great Zik as the “ranting of an ant”, once thundered “political arithmetic”.  But these bristling “youth” don’t know political geography.  Or even political optics.

    That is why a band of southern “youths” would gallop into town, bawling, with maddening rush: down with the old!  Youth power is here!

    Yet, the sitting president, with a right to second term, is from the North; in a democratic polity delicately hinged on a periodic North-South swapping of power!

    Meanwhile, these uproarious youths have no structure; hardly any reach, or even an inner eye, to see the grim optics of their show.

    Neither are they masters of organized voting power, even if on paper, the youth dominate the scroll of registered voters.

    All they crow is their rippling youth.  All they flex is their avant-garde brilliance, in neo-modern governance.

    It was a towering triumph of brilliance over gumption.  In real terms though, a triumph of folly over wisdom.  That explains the making of a thunderous crash, even before the first ballot is cast!

    In doubt?  Look at the “youth” camp, now as gentle as a baby’s sigh, to parody country music great, Dolly Parton.

    Donald Duke, about their brightest prospect, on account of his nimble fox-trots as Cross River governor (1999-2007), jerked awake to see his Social Democratic Party (SDP) ticket vanish!  His party just declared for the sitting president.

    Oby Ezekwesili, Obasanjo-era Madam Due Process, just danced herself into the ditch.  She has served herself the red card she was flashing at others.

    Worse: she exited in a blaze of putative campaign fund scandal, given the row her estranged Allied Congress Party of Nigeria (APCN) is making.  Madam Due Process in putative campaign skewed process?  It doesn’t get more awry!

    Besides, check out Oby’s political history!  APCN?  Wasn’t that Baba Oloye’s Kwara special vehicle, to make darling daughter, Gbemi, willy-nilly governor, after the gubernatorial stonewall, from beloved son, Bukky?

    How does post-modern governance sprout from such pre-medieval garden?  Perhaps only on the humus of crass opportunism!

    It also took Ohanaeze’s endorsement of Atiku Abubakar, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, to jerk Moghalu back to reality.  For all his famed brilliance, Ohanaeze has proved more astute in political arithmetic (apologies again to the late Oyi of Oyi)!

    As for Sowore, the “take it back” maverick, his campaign ended with the stunt he pulled at the Ooni of Ife’s palace, breaching age-old palace protocol, because his royal host didn’t keep to time!

    What Nigeria needs is an elected president, not a democratic anarchist.  That Sowore gamely breezes on is proof of the youths’ dashing ignorance of their milieu.

    Still, the “youth” debacle is only the symptom of a more fundamental malaise: the Nigerian penchant to yelp at pressing problems, conjuring up sweet but empty utopia, not hard thinking, as they flee.

    The result?  A rash of easy-does-it youth policy shamans, talking the talk!

    Between 2015 and 2017, it was extremely tough, as the old PDP order had collapsed the economy.

    Though former President Goodluck Jonathan was the popular scapegoat — to be fair, he contributed his own fair share to the debacle, with the freewheeling sleaze under his watch — that rot had its root in the Obasanjo presidency.

    At the best of times, Nigerians lack institutional memory.  At these worst of times, a distracted media fuelled this corporate forgetfulness, growling at “hunger in the land”.   But they blissfully forgot that quip: no pain, no gain.

    So, about everyone started shellacking PMB and his team.  When the pocket hurts, the brain seems unhinged!

    In that free-wheeling chaos, yesterday’s wreckers became today’s grating jeer-leaders, in the deafening anti-salvagers orchestra!  A theatre never got so comically absurd!

    Why, even the PDP, in a flash of delusion it mistook for transfiguration, started dreaming a snappy comeback!

    Still, the president and his team have stayed the course.

    Thanks to a general infrastructural revamp (roads, rail and power); and targeted interventionist schemes at the society’s most vulnerable, PMB has done much more, with much less resources, compared to the PDP era.

    That has put the spendthrift PDP era in bold relief; showing the former ruling party an anachronism, on its virtual death bed.

    It has also taken the sail off the loud “youth” challenge.  No one, in their right senses, would entrust their future to rookies, if they can help it.

    Still, the youth gunning for power is legitimate. The young, after all, shall grow!  But in this case, it was a costly distraction, when what was imperative was a national consensus to spring the country from a millennial jam.

    Besides in politics, a stark youth-oldie divide, is a mirage.

    Even in Emmanuel Macron’s France, Justin Trudeau’s Canada, Tony Blair’s “New Labour” Britain and Bill Clinton’s United States, the so-called “youth”, which the political dice threw up, were to their parties, tested veterans, not rookies.

    Flicked the other way, these youths were no happenstances.  They were always the spine, behind the often elderly face of power.

    So, the pride (of youth), prejudice (against old age) and conceit (of vigour) can’t gift power to the Nigerian youth.  Only clinical thinking and organization can.

  • Panic — no, sinister — button

    “When a bunch of known corrupt people unite against one man and spare no effort to ridicule him, blackmail him and attempt to assassinate his character, blindly follow that one man” — Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD, Roman emperor, and last of Rome’s “five good emperors”).

    This Marcus Aurelius quote, though a Roman classic, pierces the core of the February 16 Presidential and National Assembly elections.

    Dark forces, eternally plaguing Nigeria, bristle at their putative nemesis — and Holy Armageddon, the masses, hitherto dense and useless, appear rousing to the ancient charge of Aurelius!

    They do appear to “blindly follow” that nemesis – elite nemesis, but own saviour!

    You could then see why former President Olusegun Obasanjo is out there, in blind panic — no surprise!  Obasanjo is the fragrant air from a putrid brew.

    That also explains his rather rash last stand, a 16-page infamous tirade. It rippled with wild conjectures; and oozed, like a smelly sore, with vulgar abuse and bad breeding.  Little wonder it fell flat, earning nothing but general scorn and derision.  About time!

    Besides, for every single finger the once all-mighty Ebora Owu pointed at others, the remaining four judged him, ever so harshly, but fairly.

    For President Muhammadu Buhari’s legit second term (which the Ebora inexplicably tagged “self-succession”), juxtapose Obasanjo’s own aborted illegal “third term”.

    Beside his “they-want-to-rig” howling, over an election yet to hold, place his record-crashing, do-or-die electoral heist of 2007 – which he arrogantly promised and brazenly delivered.

    Even on suspect Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) staff, place Aisha Zakari (the woman Obasanjo tried to hang at the stakes), side by side with his very own Ayoka Adebayo, of the Maurice Iwu INEC.

    Madam Adebayo’s much trumpeted “Christian conscience” vanished, at the mighty sight of Ekiti’s electoral robbery!

    The Ebora panic becomes all the more stunning — and tragic — with his virtual slander of the Christ Jesus, and the Christianity he bequeathed mankind, on account of Atiku, Obasanjo’s newfound electoral god — and sole mirage to continued relevance.

    Incidentally, the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Christendom Nigeria’s foremost faith body, has been loudly silent on this ultra-faith slur.  But again, that’s what you get, when you waste your essence, on the dubious altar of politics.

    Somewhat, the Ebora cuts the grim picture of a mouse, stuck on rat gum, blundering for comely fish.  His is a racket of panic!

    The initial blunder was that opportunistic letter of 2018, hectoring PMB not to re-contest.  Then, bolstered by raucous self-eulogy, as he is wont, he sold the “Third Force” dummy, of a putative “youth” take-over.

    But after a failed annexation of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) — Pa Olu Falae claimed the Ebora gruffly demanded the surrender of SDP’s registration certificate, which Falae rebuffed, in a fit of opportunism trumping opportunism — Obasanjo announced, with much fanfare, the African Democratic Congress (ADC) as his “Third Force”.

    But then, ADC, after much “initial gra-gra” (to borrow that picturesque street lingo), didn’t really fly.

    So, Obasanjo found himself hooked with an Abubakar Atiku he loves to hate, but is now yoked to love, in a final(?) existential political war!  The scriptures are right: the stone that the builders refused has become the head corner stone!

    Is it the final, painful unravelling of the Ebora Owu as a political force?  Time will tell.

    But one thing, even now, is clear: the shimmer of tinsel dims, by the glitter of solid gold.  That is the Obasanjo-Buhari contrast, when the question is probity and integrity.

    But the Obasanjo-Buhari, tinsel-versus-gold juxtaposition, goes beyond integrity and probity.  It applies in so many other areas: basic honesty and decorum, trust-worthiness, credibility, selflessness, and good old community value.

    Over the years, Obasanjo had bawled and screeched and crowed: Nigeria’s very best, out of all humanity.  But then came PMB, quiet and taciturn; yet loud and foreboding, sending the former president ga-ga!

    Indeed, God bless our own WS: a tiger does not proclaim its tigeritude!

    So long for Baba, and his end-time angst!  Looming political end is a scary sight.  Only a few — if any – face it without blinking.

    Still, that can’t excuse his dangerous theatrics: attempting to discredit a legitimate vote; and scaring the lily-livered, by inciting the so-called “international community”, against a country that gave him everything.

    That goes beyond pressing a legitimate panic button.  It is pressing a sinister button, which could have devastating consequences.  Indeed, it’s a perilously new low, after June 12, in political brinkmanship.

    By the June 12, 1993 tragedy, Ibrahim Babangida and confederates scuppered a successful election; and threw the country into chaos.

    By his latest stunt, Obasanjo and confederates are trying to scupper an election yet to hold, just because they are faced with crushing defeat.

    It is an abuse of privilege to cry wolf – where there appears none — and sell the bogey of interim government (a gargoyle unknown to the Nigerian Basic Law), to the so-called “international community”.

    That borders on outright treason.  As crass gamesmanship goes, it is the most menacing, thus far.  It ought to be resoundingly condemned by all right-thinking Nigerians.

    Still, Obasanjo may not represent, or share his glory with, anyone. But on this score, he would appear only the rashest face of a baleful lobby, among them key societal gatekeepers, in blind panic.

    Faced with an epoch-defining poll, even a section of the media is busy thundering hard.  Who are you, mere mortal, to question their democratic or patriotic bona fides?

    Still, the gruff, editorial excitability, by the growling anger of its thunder, hints at sheer panic. In the final run-up to a crucial election, the people they are supposed to lead – but have been trying to illicitly teleguide – appear far ahead, in making their choice.

    In this bind too, appear critical moral gatekeepers, that nevertheless see nothing in the execrable scandal that has swallowed the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN).

    Why, even holy Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah, loudly quiet when his moral voice ought to roar in holy anger, just regained his voice: the CJN is too much of a juridical blue blood to face trial!

    Again, because the “wrong” sheriff is calling the shots!

    It is amazing how the charge of Aurelius, out of ancient Rome, resonates in today’s Nigeria.

    The mass of the people appear to have cut to the chase, leaving behind the elite, stuck with their decadent chase.

    No wonder, the elite chamber is in sheer bedlam — and in “severe pains”, apologies to Ayo Fayose!

  • Fascism: executive or judicial?

    Since it is the season of high-wire emotions, we may as well start a no less explosive debate.  Which would you prefer: executive or judicial fascism?

    Since that rather novel “suspension” of January 25, the polity has been in a tizzy.  Some bawl fascism!  Others screech dictatorship! Yet, others hiss tyranny!

    President Muhammadu Buhari, clutching an “interim order” by the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT), had “suspended” embattled Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Walter Samuel Onnoghen, as CJN and chairman of the National Judicial Council (NJC).

    In his place, he had sworn in Justice Ibrahim Tanko Mohammed, the next in line on the Supreme Court hierarchy, as acting CJN, pending the CCT trial of Justice Onnoghen, for alleged asset declaration infractions.

    The order’s exact wording, on the CJN: “It is hereby ordered as follows: That the defendant/respondent shall step aside as the CJN and chairman of NJC over allegation of contravening the provisions of the Code of Conduct and Tribunal Act CAP C15 Laws of the Federation 2004, pending the determination of the motion on notice, dated 10th January 2019.”

    And its directive to the president: “That the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria shall take all necessary measure to swear in the most senior Justice of the Supreme Court of Nigeria as acting CJN and chairman NJC in order to prevent a vacuum in the judicial arm of government, pending the determination of the motion on notice.”

    That is the legal anchor for the current high-wire drama: Onnoghen out, Mohammed in.

    But that is certainly a departure from the Constitutional provisions, which state the CJN could only be removed by the president, armed with a resolution backed by two-third majority of the Senate.

    Still, has CJN Onnoghen been removed?  No.  Stepping aside — even if pushed — cannot equate “removal”.  So, to confuse removal (final cessation), with suspension (temporary cessation), is nothing but conceptual fuzziness.

    Yet, what does the law say on suspending the CJN?  Virtually nothing, at least going by the Constitution.

    Well, the closest to that is the NJC convention, that almost automatically suspends any judge that has any case to answer.  That is a neat procedural window, to temporarily ease out a judge accused of any infraction, without necessarily losing his job before being found guilty; or blighting the majesty of his office.

    In this grim case, however, the accused judge (shame of shame!) is CJN, the chair of NJC — and from his camp would appear already some high-wire manoeuvres, not only to cling to office but also to sabotage justice.

    CJN Onnoghen indefinitely postponed NJC’s routine 88th meeting, fixed for January 15, for no specific reasons, because he allegedly feared NJC might suspend him.

    Also, on the procedural lane, a rash of courts have ruled  — including the National Industrial Court (NIC), that in this fray hardly has a locus, except the CJN is now an endangered Labour species! — that proceedings at CCT be stopped.  Judicial hand of Esau but voice of Jacob?

    The premise for these orders, for alleged procedural hiccups, is that the CJN is charged with “judicial misconduct”, in which case he is entitled to some NJC pre-sanction, to disrobe him, before facing justice in court.

    But there have been counter-voices that “forgetting” to declare your asset, as the CJN claimed he did, is easily linkable to high sleaze; which exits the window of routine “misconduct” to high financial crime.

    A judge, charged with crime, of stealing a goat or murdering his wife, for instance, they argue, loses the privilege of NJC “orderly room” pre-trial.

    But beyond arguments and counter-arguments, the media also reported that the CJN was poised to inaugurate vital adjudication tribunals, for the 2019 general elections.

    In other words, smudge, stink and all, His Lordship was going to pretend his reputation was intact; and public perception irrelevant.

    Had that happened, a blighted CJN, in public perception, if not court conviction, would have infected those tribunals with his perceived stench, no matter how immaculate the members of those tribunals are.  For that prime public evil, he would have pleaded “presumption of innocence”, which by the way is no crime, under our present prosecutorial legal system.

    But isn’t good, old honour, stepping aside to clear his name, far better — honour that presumably comes with his office, as even he is addressed “Honourable CJN”?

    That Justice Onnoghen would prefer to hang in there, to game the system as long as he possibly could, relying on procedural cant, just shows how low the judicial system has sunk.

    That goes back to the CCT order.

    To be sure, that order remains controversial, since the Constitution didn’t say exactly say how a CJN should be suspended.

    But perhaps as in the Njangiwa 11 December 2017 Court of Appeal verdict, which the technicality ensemble now codify as the regnant “law”, that must willy-nilly keep the CJN in office, maybe the CCT order should pass as “latest law”, to teach the CJN fresh tutorials in the harsh strictures of honour.  That cannot be bad for a redemption-needing Bench, can it?

    In realpolitik terms, however, it’s gaming and counter-gaming.  The arrogant SANs tried to game the system by propping up a CJN whose integrity has all but vamoosed.

    That would not only have further profaned the judiciary, it would have firmly founded judicial fascism, in which only crass procedural manipulations — never Justice — matter.

    But the president too has counter-gamed: to unhorse a damaged CJN; and put the dazed judiciary out of its misery.

    Grant those whose editorials thunder and howl against “dictatorship” and “fascism” their democratic bile.

    But like the deluded pro-Onnoghen SANs, it’s the tragedy of a media that prides its manipulative weapons over and above clear thinking for public good.

    As for the so-called “international community”, they should propel Onnoghen to the apex of their Bench, to underscore his excellent conduct.  That would appear far more convincing than mere diplomatic whining.

    If PMB’s push, to teach a recalcitrant CJN basic honour amounts to “fascism”, so be it.

    But better an executive fascism (to which you have putative checks); than judicial fascism (in which the ultimate check is irredeemably corrupted and destroyed).

    Still, all blare about “fascism” is scare-mongering from an evil class, that knows it’s about to be checkmated; and try to dress their private evil in public good.

    But even if it comes to that, blame no one but lawyers (basic and applied) who, in Achebe-speak, grow so powerful they challenge their chi (personal god) to a wrestling bout.

    It’s the classic pride that goes before a loud crash!

  • CJN and elite bully tactics

    The other day, Daily Trust broke, on its front page, complete with battleground map, a secret Baga counter-attack plan, against Boko Haram.

    The military, with other security agencies, promptly raided the Trust premises.

    Reacting to the outrage – which indeed, it was – a top editor howled: the military, invading a newspaper house, in 21stcentury Nigeria, under a democracy!

    Splendid!  But why his loud silence on the newspaper’s counter-outrage: the reckless publication of combat information, which could alert the enemy, lead to needless casualties and jeopardize the country’s security?

    It was a perfect emotive whoop, complete with cynical and ruthless card-stacking.  The military were the villains – to be sure! — for not following “due process”, in a democracy.

    Much more: it was a signal for the “media rights” herd to bleat, hoot and roar; and drown the republic with a hubbub of own perspective – simply because they could and would!  Call it the media’s democratic right to self-help!

    But if that was the regnant illogic, why then blame the military too, for raiding Trust – simply because they could and would?  Or is one self-help any less democratic than another?

    Welcome to Nigeria, the republic of elite bullies!  Beyond that, nothing else matters – no shared values, no grand ethos, just elite waywardness!

    That same elite conceit now drives the Nigerian Judiciary, even as it faces its direst catastrophe ever – calling to rude question, the integrity of Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Walter Samuel Nkanu Onnoghen.

    And how did the flower of the Bar – and probably the Bench, since those are not easily quotable – react to that stain?  Pushing forth a clatter of technicalities – simply because they can and they will!

    In a scandal that is easily a record, even with Nigeria’s cascade of chartered sleaze in the public space, CJN Onnoghen is accused of not declaring all his assets.

    The jurist has not denied those grave charges.  All he reportedly said, in response, was that he forgot to declare some of them – among those three bank accounts: a trove in foreign currencies, thus naturally fuelling suspicions, in a country that thrives on conspiracy theories.

    Given the sacredness of his office, the CJN would appear mortally wounded; if not outright destroyed.

    In that famous Caesar-speak, he is not Caesar’s wife that must not only be above board but be seen as so.  He is the very Caesar, whose conduct must be absolutely unimpeachable.

    In any case, that is society’s expectation of the Judiciary – and CJN is head of that hallowed chamber.

    But why these superhuman expectations, when the CJN, leading other judges, is just a mere mortal and fellow citizen?  It is because judges enjoy super-human reverence and privileges.  When any citizen appears before their courts, they become Their Lordships, even in a full-fletched republican democracy!

    This reverence is less because of their profundity in scholarship, though lawyers often claim sole monopoly to learnedness, when they bristle with procedures; and ripple with arcane legal technicalities.

    It is rather because piety and the most rigorous of ethical behaviours are presumed an integral part of the Judiciary, at the apex of which nestles the immaculate Lord CJN.

    So, when the CJN faces a dire integrity question – as it would appear in the present case – you just remember the Parson’s value lament, in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Prelude to Canterbury Tales: “If gold rusts, what will iron do?”  That is the hole the judiciary has found itself.

    The mere shame of it all ought to have struck everyone dumb.  Polite society, gravely led by the CJN himself, ought to have embarked on a judicial Operation Shock and Awe to sanitize the judiciary, after the CJN had quit without much ado.

    But what do we have?  Senior lawyers, rallying their junior ones, rattle with grating technicalities.

    True, law qua law, of which they are grandmasters, you probably cannot fault their triumphant finality: “the law is the law.  If you don’t like it, change it.  But until then, that’s all we have and that’s all we’d work with”!

    Still, in their self-serving, all-knowing clatter, they appear blind, deaf and dumb to other citizens’ basic sense of right and wrong; and whose plebeian noses get assailed by a thick stench, oozing from the supposed sacred temple of justice.

    Tragically, as this posturing heightens, the Judiciary sinks deeper into infamy, no one could have contemplated in 2007, when out-going President, Olusegun Obasanjo, broke all previous records in electoral infamy, with his “do-or-die” electoral heist!

    And irony of ironies!  The same Obasanjo, who procured a certain Maurice Iwu for his grand election steal, is now writing a sterile rigmarole, casting aspersions on the current INEC!  Laughable, isn’t that?  But that’s story for another day.

    Back in 2007, when former CJN Muhammadu Lawal Uwais, proposed the CJN should sit-in-council with NJC to nominate the electoral chief, many thought it was a brilliant idea.  Indeed, such was the high faith that not a few even clamoured that the president should cease that power to the CJN.

    Barely 11 years later, that very suggestion appears utterly ludicrous.

    First, it was CJN Alloysius Katsina-Alu (now dead) that unconscionably gamed Justice Ayo Salami, for upholding the law on electoral matters; and railroaded the NJC into rubber-stamping that crap.

    Now, it’s CJN Onnoghen, caught in a messy asset non-declaration blot.

    In-between, it was a slew of justices, some of them from the Supreme Court, caught with allegedly questionable assets.  They were neither found guilty nor innocent.

    It’s a measure of how the glory is vanished from Nigeria’s Judiciary that the best senior lawyers could essay, in their CJN rally, was ratchet up hollow procedure, used to spring those justices from their jam — not some definitive push for his integrity.

    How are they so blest!

  • Lest we forget

    Gloating partisans sure enjoy poking and peppering Bukola Saraki, Senate President, and Yakubu Dogara, Speaker, House of Representatives, over the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) defeat, at the November 17 by-election, into three federal constituencies.

    The constituencies: Irepodun/Isin/Ekiti/Oke Ero (Kwara), Toro (Bauchi) and Kankia/Kusada/Ingawa (Katsina).

    On the personal lane, you can’t over-stretch these defeats.  Neither the Kwara nor the Bauchi defeat came from Saraki’s or Dogara’s direct constituencies.  Indeed, the Kwara federal constituency is outside Saraki’s Kwara Central senatorial district.

    Yet, as a symbolic pointer, to the possible electoral drubbing to come, particularly for those treacherous 8th National Assembly members, that turned vicious powers and principalities against the people’s core interests, that was immensely satisfying.

    To boot: both Saraki and Dogara symbolize those partisan and people treacheries.  So, it is sweet they bear the brunt of those defeats, even if vicarious.

    Partisan treachery, because both got into the National Assembly via All Progressives Congress (APC) mandates.  Saraki’s brazen perfidy against his party, to willy-nilly land the Senate presidency, is known to all; and still riles the conscientious.

    From there, both Saraki and Dogara have returned to PDP; but lack the basic personal decency, talk less of honour, to surrender the Senate Presidency and the House Speakership — perks they got on APC’s parliamentary majority.  Still, though they grimly sit tight, they stand much more defanged.

    Now, to people treachery.  Even if principle is rare on the opportunistic partisan plain, how do you justify deliberate anti-people manoeuvres, by parliament whose social contract ought to be pro-people?

    For three years, this 8th National Assembly, under the leadership of Saraki and Dogara, chisel away at the national budget.  Like noxious rats, they claw at the document, keeping the plums for selves; throwing the chaff the people’s way.

    Though their sole business ought to be the greatest happiness of the greatest number, to echo Jeremy Bentham, their target would appear inflicting the greatest sorrow on the greatest number, but seasoning that evil with parliamentary cant.

    An economy that dipped into recession and was bereft of savings needed to ramp up its infrastructure, to get moving again.

    That was the spirit of the budgets, these past three years, to achieve swift infrastructural rebirth, particularly in roads and rail — the vital transportation sector, so key to re-galvanizing the economy.

    But their majestic lawmakers clearly had contrary ideas.  If they were not accused of satanic padding of the document for personal lollies — equating deep communal pains — they were manically slicing off huge funds, budgeted for key national road arteries, for the so-called community projects: boreholes, the purchase of Keke Marwa (shuttle tricycles) for constituents and sundry cases of budgetary dissipation.

    Yes, constituency projects are no democratic crime.  But the rogue motive for these particular dissipations would appear clear.

    After subverting the Federal Government’s efforts at a nationwide infrastructure rebirth, budget paring for junk projects becomes sweet poison to turn the local folks against an “incompetent” central Leviathan!

    There are even tales: that the Saraki Senate presidency was an alleged Trojan horse to sabotage President Muhammadu Buhari’s efforts at vaulting the country from the 2015 trough; and that the scorched earth legislative agenda was a double whammy: discredit and de-market the present order by rogue parliamentary activism; then prepare the ground for a triumphant return to PDP.

    A version of that tale even alleged: that Atiku Abubakar, ex-APC but current PDP presidential candidate, allegedly midwifed Saraki’s emergency as willy-nilly Senate president, as a fundamental part of the Saraki-Dogara wreck-and-bale stratagem.

    Still, for all you know, all these might just be vicious political yarns, that come with the explosive territory of political intrigue and soulless gaming for power.

    But whatever the facts or fiction, the 8th National Assembly’s recourse to diverting funds from crucial projects has achieved at least two spectacular goals: the Lagos-Ibadan expressway, hitherto billed for completion by December 2019, won’t reach that threshold until 2021!

    Another casualty is the 2nd Niger Bridge, which completion period is now 48 months.  That has prompted a delegation of South East leaders going to plead with the president to help speed up the completion process to 24 months.

    The 2nd Niger Bridge is an especial anti-climax.  After for eons surviving its ogbanje project status, and finally getting off the ground against all odds, it has to be slowed down by political intrigues, from the same parliament, supposed to be a conclave loyal to the people!

    That is the height of this parliament’s people treachery.  Because of these clearly unpatriotic intrigues, whatever contribution these transport infrastructures can contribute to Nigeria’s real economic growth is delayed by at least two years.  The multiplier effects of that setback are massive.

    So, as the people continue to face avoidable economic strangulations, their representatives, both in the Senate and in the House of Representatives, continue feeding fat — not to champion the people’s welfare but to push arid intrigues, that further ruin the majority and law-abiding.

    Which is why, lest we forget: the coming election season must be payback time.

    At the acme of this National Assembly’s anti-people misconduct, when some deluded parliamentarians got smitten by hubris; scorning sponsoring parties and voters, as no more than despicable serfs, this column, on its logo, started an on-running campaign: “Correct the mistake of 2015.  Vote out the corrupt legislators”.

    Come February 2019, it is time to walk that talk.  It is time to reward those loyal parliamentarians, that put their voters’ interests first.  But it is also time to maul, with a vengeance, parliamentary reactionaries, that rewarded their parties and voters with concentrated contempt.

    That is why it is immensely pleasing that both Saraki and Dogara are feeling the earliest heats, en route to 2019, given the roasting of their party at the November 17 federal by-elections.

    Both might have offered the suspect leadership for a parliament that brutally short-changed Nigerians.  But also, no member of that gang, bivouacked in the people’s legislative chambers, must escape judgment on Election Day.

    Besides, it’s high time Nigerians got over the costly illusion that voting the president is all that matters.  This 8th National Assembly has exploded that myth, with its anti-people conduct.

    Can you just imagine the progress this country would have made now, had the Saraki-Dogara legislature kept faith with the Buhari executive’s infrastructural vision?

    That is why, in 2019, Nigerians must vote both the president and the right set of parliamentarians.

     

    Vacation time

    It’s vacation time, after a full year’s toll.  On virtual election eve, that looks like abandoning duty.  But though the spirit is willing, the body is tired.  Thanks readers, for a most active interaction, and see you, by God’s grace, in mid-January 2019.  Do have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

  • Osun revolutionary years

    Christ, the divine, the Jews treated like scum. They didn’t rest until they nailed him to the cross, though he committed no crime.

    But after his resurrection and Ascension came Christianity, which billions today swear by. It is the nature of man to scoff at authentic heroes, secular or spiritual.

    From the divine to the legend. When Chief Obafemi Awolowo exited the Western Nigeria Premiership in 1959, not a few swore his political death had come.

    For one, his Action Group (AG), got drubbed at the December 1959 elections.  For another, Awolowo’s traducers, federal and regional, felt they had him exactly where they wanted him — on the brutal slaughter slab.

    Ferocious pre-death torture was the Coker Commission of Inquiry. The final gory chop? Awo’s conviction for treasonable felony.

    But where politics faltered, legacy triumphed. The man of ideas and unfazed federalist, who ran the most revolutionary government in Nigerian history, eventually trumped his traducers.

    Today, millions swear by Awo’s name. But nobody remembers his traducers and pyrrhic political “conquerors” — except for their perfidy and notoriety.

    As Awolowo before him, is Rauf Aregbesola gifting the polity — at least, the historic-minded segment of it — a sense of deja vu?

    1st Republic’s conventional politics laughed Awo’s policy brilliance to scorn — and for good measure, thrashed his AG at the polls.

    Still, Awo’s death in 1987 marked his apotheosis into some political god, whose thinking, particularly on Nigeria’s troubled federalism, is ever fresh and relevant.

    Aregbesola has run the most revolutionary, development-savvy and most impactful government, since Awo’s 1959 sign-off, in any part of Western Nigeria.

    True, two other governments come in for close mention.

    One, Alhaji Lateef Jakande’s 2nd Republic Lagos governorship (1979-1983).  It was four years of non-stop people-focused action; which has secured Jakande’s place in history, even while he still lives, despite the Abacha era stain.

    Two, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s Lagos governorship (1999-2007).  That government not only re-birth Lagos as self-sustaining and as Nigeria’s economic dynamo, it also discovered Aregbesola himself, as its infrastructure czar; aside from unleashing Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, three-in-one Minister, Babatunde Raji Fashola, and a slew of others, who continue to positively impact the current federal order.

    The big difference, however, is that Lagos had a head start as Nigeria’s former capital and the grand infrastructure it inherited, even if progressively decayed.

    Osun had practically nothing — and Aregebsola started planting his future garden of hope, opportunities, development and prosperity, in virtual virgin land, in a virtual infrastructural desert, physical and social.

    Given Osun’s barrenness by 2010, that garden has sprouted and thrived beyond many dreams, though some Osun elite continue to screech over short-term discomfort; and the state, even after Aregbesola’s eight path-finding years, is still a sprawling work-in-progress.

    So, like Awo, Aregbesola felt his ground-breaking feats should gift his ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) gubernatorial candidate, Gboyega Oyetola, a thumping mandate.

    But what ensued was the most nail-biting cliffhanger in Nigeria’s electoral history — spiced with the tragi-comedy of a dancing blob, with a wide berth from own family estate, nearly capering into the Osun governorship; and undoing eight years of unusual creativity, punishing thinking and gruelling work!

    But whatever happens at the election tribunal, Aregbesola’s place in Osun history is assured; though, not unlike Awo before him, many appear too blinded by current orchestrated negative blitz, to realize just that.

    An Oyetola win will secure continued hard work, on Osun’s steady but challenging march, into a glorious future, anchored on a solid foundation.

    But an Ademola Adeleke win would seal a pact with Stone Age, as in Ayo Fayose’s neighbouring Ekiti; complete with had-we-known gnashing of teeth, four years down the line!

    Either way — and God knows Osun deserves the better deal — Aregbe’s legacy is made.

    Despite a blighted economy, the Aregbe era boasts futuristic infrastructure, of gleaming roads and glittering schools, in eight short years; never before imagined, in Osun’s puddle of routinized rot.

    Should things turn awry, these landmarks would turn damning testimonies, against sordid electoral choices; like dust off the apostles’ sandals, dire evidence against those that scorned the gospel.

    But should things stay as they are, the in-coming Governor Oyetola is well placed to ramp up Osun to the next level; and banish, forever, its past stagnation.

    Still, not even those sparkling infrastructures would fully define Aregbe’s revolutionary “government unusual”. Rather, equal opportunity access would.

    Aregbesola, even with a lean purse, started the schools feeding system, the most radical pro-poor school magnet, of his political generation.

    By it, millions of children, from Osun’s most vulnerable homes, have been drawn to school; and served nutritive menu their parents could never have afforded. These children, as future adults, would proclaim Aregbe’s legacy.

    But what is welfare to these kids, is vibrant lifeline to no less beneficiary adults — crop, poultry and animal farmers, food vendors and sundry value chains.

    If 30 million children now benefit from the Federal Government version of this scheme, know that Aregbesola’s Osun started it all.

    When Aregbe started his equal opportunity religious push, a tragically limited media scoffed it off as “Islamization” — and wrote tonnes and tonnes of goading news and vitriol-spitting editorials.

    Yet, his government headed by a devout Muslim, is the first to stand for the rights of adherents to African traditional faiths, when he declared the yearly Osun Isese Day.

    Yes, his declaration of the Islamic New Year has spawned the Hijab controversy in schools, which not a few would rather condemn, because it bucks the conventional wisdom of “settled” school “uniform”.

    Still, today’s “secular” uniforms had Christian roots. Both the colonial government and missionaries that founded earliest schools were Christians. So is the Monday to Friday governmental work week. Therefore, the Hijab is symbol of long repressed legitimate rights, in a multi-religious polity.

    It takes a deeply focused but discerning government to push such campaigns without slipping on the brick-and-mortar, which everyone can see.

    Aregbesola’s Osun federalist rebranding, complete with its coat of arms, again sent a section of the media ga-ga, bawling “secession!”

    Yet today, Aregbesola exits power as a proud exponent of the Yoruba identity, unfazed proponent of Awo’s developmental politics and unapologetic advocate of South West integration within a federal Nigeria, without any iota Yoruba supremacism.

    Those who claim Ogbeni has “failed” are entitled to their democratic delusion.  But Aregbe legacies have already dug their graves.  History will bury them without trace.

  • Inanity as electioneering strategy

    Crass inanity, as electioneering strategy, dogs the 2019 elections, as they draw close.

    That is why the electorate must be clear-headed; listen to the right stuff, and ask the right questions.

    A prime inanity is the sterile uproar over President Muhammadu Buhari’s school certificate.  Despite the attestation by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), not a few still jabber and yammer to the contrary.

    This rather passionate nuisance bickers over all sorts — the photograph affixed on the attestation paper; who or who didn’t request for the attestation; WAEC’s alleged “diving” into partisan waters for PMB; the summary dismissal of the attestation itself as a “forgery” — rabid rallies just to hold on to wilful falsehood.  Ignorance was never so combative!

    That is inanity in its crudest form.

    But it also comes “refined” — for lack of better words to define lobbies, passing off personal bitterness as sweet public good. For another election-eve inanity, look no farther than the Afenifere camp.

    The pugnacious Baba Ayo Adebanjo may not symbolize Afenifere at its most sublime and politically correct form.

    But he epitomizes, more than any other, its id — to borrow the language of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis — without the filtering powers of the ego and the super ego: the basest, of Afenifere’s essence, complete with its dark ethnic dross.

    Baba Adebanjo just decided to push his constitutional right to “sell” the Yoruba to  Atiku Abubakar.

    According to his logic, Bola Tinubu made a mistake by, in 2015, “selling” the Yoruba to PMB, with his Afenifere, he forgot to add, kicking, screaming and squealing, in protest-support for Goodluck Jonathan, and his raining dollars!

    Now, Baba Adebanjo is bent on making his own counter-”sale”.  The snag is no one remembers any Yoruba assemblage gifting him that power to play Hobson, for all the Yoruba.

    But no prize for guessing — that self-imposed mandate is “restructuring”, admittedly, a Yoruba political project, that has its root in Chief Obafemi Awolowo’s espousal of ethnic federalism, in his 1947 classic, Path to Nigerian Freedom.

    Still, in the Afenifere context, “restructuring”, as this column has always maintained, is nothing but a survivalist racket, tapping into the deepest of Yoruba ethnic recesses, after the Afenifere 2015 debacle.

    Besides, Baba Adebanjo, from his statements, would appear assailed by two major dissonances — PMB, on the ethnic plane; and Tinubu, on the partisan front.

    Chief Adebanjo was quick to dismiss PMB’s integrity as “fake”.  That was vulgar abuse, to be sure.  Still, even a child knows what partisan bile doesn’t confer, it can’t possibly take away.

    PMB has lived his integrity all his life.  That’s why he is facing down the everlasting vermin that dub themselves “owners of Nigeria”; and sending that camp, scuttling in sheer panic.  Still, those blinded by ethnic hate can’t see that!

    The Tinubu conundrum, among the fiercely contending blocs within the Yoruba progressives, is tantamount to Mark Anthony’s painful musing over Augustus Caesar, in Shakespeare’s tragic play, Anthony and Cleopatra.

    While crushing the anti-Julius Caesar conspiracy, Augustus was nothing but a mere lieutenant, while Anthony was already a full general.  Yet, as a co-member of the second triumvirate of Anthony, Augustus and Aemilus Lepidus, Augustus always trumped his old general!

    So, the Afenifere old guard might feel really hard done by Tinubu — and for good reasons.

    The one had peddled Awo and his name, all their long, long political lives; with little or no value-added: just fiery inheritors and fierce wielders of the lucrative Awo franchise.

    The other has used the Awo pedestal to build a surfeit of new generation leaders, true to their Yoruba progressive essence but uninhibited by the ethnic ancestral feud that limits the old guard; and can therefore view Nigeria from a more total picture.

    Besides, one camp shrivels while the other sprouts; and yet another judgment — nay, harvest — time is near!

    You can, therefore, see the shrivelling party hug, in sheer ecstasy, an especially virulent form of Yoruba irredentism, if not outright supremacy, to rally a crowd.  In that fevered nightmare, Tinubu is the perfect scapegoat!  Yet, the electorate isn’t that daft!

    All of these manouevres, nevertheless, belong to Afenifere’s spite-filled but vocal minority, a cabal that has seized that conclave and chisselled it according to its whims and caprices.  That Baba Ayo Fasanmi just called their bluff is ample proof.

    Still, beyond Afenifere is another ensemble of pretentious inanity — the so-called “objective” army of media critics.  This clan rattles with so much violence when they declare things are wrong.  But when things are right, they lose their thunder and become absolutely coy — if not outright miserable!

    No thanks to their patriotic clatter, a country at a dire strait can’t achieve a consensus to get out of its bind.  The social tragedy from this camp is huge: that their so-called analyses are rich only drives them to more rabid mischief.

    But again, it behoves the reading or watching or listening public to be wary — lest they be misled.

    The 2019 elections are as defining as any, in Nigeria’s chequered electoral history.  The choice is simple, really: to discard the gains of 2015 and go back to pre-2015 Egypt, Olusegun Obasanjo’s era of rot; or join PMB to consolidate on building a new Nigerian order, even if it is early days yet; and things are tough.

    But it is this stark choice that those who have nothing to offer try to obliterate and complicate, by throwing in all sorts of inanities — ethnic, religious and sundry noises.  Still, it’s the PMB’s camp bounden duty to keep the electorate focused.  That is crucial to wise electoral choice.

    By this time in 2014, a rattled President Jonathan was posing as “persecuted Christian” president, shopping for orchestrated but rogue blessings; and sending his Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) collaborators, in cant and in mammon, tingling with faith and ethnic hate!

    Shortly after would follow a massive dollar rain, from which even a pillar of the moral palladium of Afenifere could not but “obtain”!  Of course, Jonathan’s grovelling for pity followed four years of presidential collapse.

    Mercifully now, PMB hasn’t gone on his own sortie of illicit blessings, from mosques nationwide, as “Muslim” president.  He has made his own mistakes, no doubt.  But all he has done is concentrate on his work.

    Well, the only pre-election sortie, right now, is Vice President Yemi Osinbajo’s Tradermoni financial inclusion crusade, to the poorest of the poor and the most vulnerable of Nigerian hardworking folks, gritting it out in Nigerian markets, nationwide.

    What is more?  The seed money, for Tradermoni, comes from retrieved Abacha loot!  That makes a definite statement — a radical departure from the old Obasanjo order of feeding a few but powerful parasites, to spending Nigeria’s scarce resources on the majority of Nigerians.

    That critical shift is what the 2019 elections are all about — and why a panicky Obasanjo has abandoned his much vaunted “Third Force”, to gobble his twin vomit of PDP and Atiku Abubakar, incidentally Afenifere’s new beloved twin champions!

    True, it’s only in crises that folks really show who truly they are — and the Afenifere is living proof!

  • Exit The Fixer

    Tony Akhakon Anenih’s passage (4 August 1933 – 28 October 2018) at 85, like the death of any elder, is sweet and sour, especially for his kith and kin.

    Sweet, because he was an old man.  Sour, because no matter how old your old folks get, you hate to see them go.

    So, you can’t but bond with the Anenih family, in their grim gaiety — empathy with them while mourning their dead; but gaiety too, because their patriarch died at ripe old age.

    But outside that intimate family circle, in the broad public sphere where he played for almost 40 years (1981-2018), Anenih was one of those unsavory figures of Nigerian politics and governance.

    But the redeeming grace was his ideological fealty, extremely rare, in the quicksand of Political Nigeria.

    Anenih rose or sunk with his conservative class; and would do whatever it took to put his talents at their disposal — no matter how ugly or dire. In Soyinka-esque quip, the end justifies the meanness!

    So, he didn’t earn that moniker, Mr. Fix It, for nothing — the ultimate muscler-in-chief, in the Olusegun Obasanjo (dis)order, which pitiably collapsed in 2015, on fall guy-in-chief, Goodluck Jonathan.

    Neither, for nothing, did he, at the zenith of conservative power, earn President Obasanjo’s fond praise: “My Leader” — perhaps, comparable only to Obasanjo’s rogue praise of the late Lamidi Adedibu, the Obasanjo-era South West “garrison commander”.

    Anenih made his political debut as Bendel State (now Edo and Delta states) chairman of the 2nd Republic National Party of Nigeria (NPN).

    He not only ousted another Tony, the great Chief Anthony Enahoro, iconic 1st Republic (1960-1966) progressive voice turned 2nd Republic Bendel conservative guttural. Via another controversial election, Anenih led the local NPN to electorally sack Governor Ambrose Alli, the Bendel Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) governor (1979-1983).

    Their triumphant candidate was the iconic Sam Ogbemudia, who nevertheless was governor from 1 October till the putsch of 31 December 1983, that terminated the 2nd Republic.

    Read also: Anenih’s unsung wonder

    Incidentally, Ogbemudia (also now dead) would later distance himself from the Anenih-powered Edo politics of underdevelopment; which came crashing with the Adams Oshiomhole governorship, birthing in 2018, with the reclaim of a stolen mandate.

    The great Enahoro too would later sever his interregnum with the political conservatives, to launch his Movement for National Reformation (MNR), which with other allies, staged the Pro-National Conference Organizations (PRONACO) national conference, proposing a new constitution to re-federalize Nigeria, in Lagos, 2005.

    But not Anenih!  He lived and died a conservative, warts and all, though even he fell into some eerie (dis?)quiet, very close to his grave, when he declared himself “retired” from politics.

    Chief Anenih would burst on the Nigerian consciousness, as second chairman of the Ibrahim Babangida-created Social Democratic Party (SDP), after his more conservative People’s Front (PF) faction, of the late Shehu Musa Yar’Adua, had trumped, in party posts, the more progressive People’s Solidarity Party (PSP) faction, peopled by the older Awoists.

    Anenih’s SDP faction conspired with anti-democratic military elements and other reactionary forces to negotiate away Basorun MKO Abiola’s June 12, 1993 presidential mandate.

    The result was the Ernest Shonekan-chaired Interim National Government (ING), which the grim Sani Abacha would later shove aside, to inflict his own iron rule.

    That brazen rape of the sanctity of the vote established Anenih’s political notoriety, once and for all.  That violent assault, and its impassioned challenge by MKO, and other pro-democracy forces, threw Nigeria into a dire crisis.

    But it also exhausted the historical possibilities of an uppity but hypocritical military; quick to grab power, but a sheer epitome of galloping graft, wanton sleaze and crippling decadence.

    For all its needless trouble, however, the June 12 crisis shut up — forever — the noxious Nigerian breed of military politicians, bringing their once respected institution into disrepute, with their uncommon greed. That was one unintended good for the polity.

    Still, the leading figures, of that ING conspiracy, only had own self-tragedies to show — for causing the majority much anguish and pain?

    Yar’Adua died in Abacha’s gulag; Obasanjo barely escaped that doom, before powering back as first 4th Republic elected president, no thanks  to the eternal plotting of the generals; Abacha himself died in office, but blights his loved ones with an abiding, rotten memory of irredeemable sleaze; IBB endures long, long post-office blues, after all the power and all the glory, of not only being in office but also being in power; Shonekan, never garrulous at the best of times, keeps a sensitive quiet at the worst, the placid face of a roaring, vicious conspiracy; and Anenih had his reputation, and political essence, permanently blighted, long before he breathed his last.

    Just as well, perhaps?  Brutal question but hardly an unfair query.

    Anenih, led by his party leader and then sitting president, Obasanjo, were unfazed anti-democratic elements.  Yet, they ended up as prime beneficiaries of MKO’s martyrdom, after four years in Abacha’s gulag, for claiming a rightful mandate.

    Still, they were cavalier, in their politics and policies, that reward for anti-democracy is prime and juicy democratic office.

    Obasanjo went on a tangent of unfazed presidential imperialism, ready to crush any opposition to its power — no matter how outrageous that exercise of crude power; or how reasoned or towering, the moral authority of the challenge.  If your doubt, ask Lagos State and its seized local government funds.

    Anenih, meanwhile, was festooned up there, to fix everything fixable or execrable, just to maintain power, no matter what.  That hubris led to the attempt to “fix” the Oshiomhole election result, which failure eventually led to, in Oshiomhole’s own biting own words, “retiring” the Edo political godfathers.

    That is the long and short of the Obasanjo-led PDP order, that collapsed on Jonathan in 2015.

    Though Anenih sunk into some loud quiet, after that order had crashed in 2015, Obasanjo appears fated to rattle until he breathes his last, given his latest activism to promote Atiku Abubakar’s PDP presidential candidacy, even after publishing unprintable stuff about that same Atiku; beside, without much ado, abandoning his own so-called “Third Force”, that he had announced, with much pomp, less than nine months ago.

    But Obasanjo labours in vain, for the order he promotes is too rotten to receive a new life.  Anenih’s death may well be an earlier spiritual warning, about the eventual but dismal death of that misadventure.

    Anenih was a prime study in the fatality of turning reactionary, even as a conservative.  But make no mistake: reaction is no sole monopoly of conservatives.

    As the 2019 elections approach, this polity teems with virulent progressive reactionaries, selling pure falsehood, just to stay alive and relevant.  But again, all that would end in vain — and pain.

    Anenih never ranked among the salutary politicians of his time.  Still, may God forgive his sins and grant him eternal rest.

  • Paramole!

    Paramole!

    That about captures the essence of Asiwaju Olorunfunmi Basorun, who turned 80 on October 15; and marked that epoch with a biography: Paramole O Koro Iwosi: Asiwaju Reuben Olorunfunmi Basorun, authored by The Nation’s Soji Omotunde.

    “Paramole” is the Yoruba for rattlesnake, which though is famously tranquil, strikes with fatal devastation when rattled.

    That was exactly Basorun’s public service essence. Teasers:

    It was the low blues of military overthrow of the 2nd Republic (31 December 1983); and the popular fib that everyone, in the overthrown old order, was a thief.

    This reconstructed dialogue ensued between a cleared Basorun and the Police at CID Panti, Ebute-Meta, Lagos. Basorun had gone to re-claim his international passport.

    Basorun: “Where is my US$ 1, 900 armed policemen took from my official GRA, Ikeja, quarters?”
    Police: “We have spent it on a number of things, including imprest. But we have small change left — in Naira”!
    Basorun (taking the Naira wad and putting it in his jacket pocket), roaring: “Now, you say we politicians are rogues! Why should you spend my money?”
    Police (mumbling): “It was not our fault …”
    Basorun (bawling): “Whose fault — the Army’s? Shame on you, all!” — and he stormed out of Panti.

    Indeed, Paramole ko ‘ro ‘wosi — the rattlesnake brooks no insult! How Basorun earned that cognomen was no less dramatic.

    Dada Adepari Paramole, his grandfather had, in his native Igbogbo, announced, with grim gaiety, that newborn Olorunfunmi would hasten his departure. Pronto, a few weeks later, Grandpa Paramole died! Enter, Olorunfunmi, the Paramole incarnate!

    No less gripping, was Albert Adewamiwa Ogumuyiwa, his biological father’s early death; and his mother, Abigail Bosede Ogunmuyiwa’s betrothal to Pa Yesufu Adeniji Basorun, a World War II veteran, then domiciled at 47, Oluwole Street, Lagos.

    The denizens of Oluwole would later be resettled at Ogba, Ikeja, segment of “new Lagos”; after Ebute Meta, Yaba and Surulere.

    Ogunmuyiwa died when Olorufunmi was five. The boy knew his father as much as a close five-year old would; since he always accompanied the parent to his farm. But the Ogunmuyiwas’ loss would appear the Basoruns’ gain, since the boy had to formally take his stepfather’s name.

    But at the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Reuben Olorunfunmi Basorun would tangle with another Basorun, Alhaji Shittu A. Basorun (no blood relation). The older Basorun threatened to scuttle his subordinate’s promising career, for inadvertently sighting the senior’s pay advice — a fulsome £100!

    CBN headhunted the younger Basorun on 5 January 1959, following his dazzling prowess in Mathematics, during his secondary school years, at Eko Boys’ High School (EBHS).

    Still, the youngster survived that initial threat — thanks to fasting and prayers, from a white garment church. He would, much later, rise to become the spiritual head of one of such churches, The Gospel Church of C & S.

    Nevertheless, that initial battle would trigger his Paramole spirit, to fight for his right, and those of his colleagues’ at CBN, no matter the odds — and triumph, most of the times.

    Basorun would lead a strike — drafted when the initial leader was pressured out by the Gowon military government — for better welfare for CBN staff, until the Gowon government passed a decree outlawing such.

    He also wrote an unsigned, though hand-written letter, to protest CBN staff injustices, causing the Thomas Aguiyi-Ironsi first military government to formally warn the CBN management against such conduct.

    Later, he would lead a group of four to write daily letters to protest being looked over for promotion, when lesser qualified staff were promoted, during the Clement Isong CBN governorship. Though the others soon chickened out, he continued the daily protest letter, for which he was threatened with a sack by Governor Isong.

    But then, came the Murtala Muhammad coup, the sack of Isong and the appointment of Mallam Adamu Ciroma as new CBN governor. Ciroma finally addressed the problem and Basorun (with other cheated but qualified staff) got his promotion as Assistant Director, thus attaining the CBN executive rank.

    That vaulted him into some instant CBN staff champion — “For any problem,” his fellow staff would crow, “call Basorun”!

    When he exited CBN in 1979, to join the elected Lateef Jakande government, as secretary to the Lagos State Government (SLG), he had attained the post of Deputy Director.

    Even with punitive postings to Maiduguri and volunteering to go run the Jos branch of CBN during the Araba crisis of 1966, at the apex of the Igbo pogrom in Northern Nigeria, he had rendered stellar service to the apex bank.

    That was aside from, as part-time student, earning professional epaulets as chartered banker, chartered secretary, and a BSc in Business Administration from the University of Lagos. He would, post-Second Republic, study Law at the same Unilag; later proceeding to the Law School, Lagos, to earn a BL.

    Indeed, Basorun’s punitive posting to Maiduguri nearly scuttled his Unilag BSc programme, but for the understanding of his Dean, Unilag’s Faculty of Business Administration, Accounting Professor, Michael Adeyemo.

    Yet, Basorun responded with nothing but excellent service to his bank. It was no wonder then, that his latter days at CBN, under Olabiyi Durojaiye (later Senator) and Ola Vincent as Governor, was much more enjoyable.

    Paramole got to know Alhaji Jakande, in his bid to checkmate a perceived marginalization, by Ikorodu indigenes, of other natives of Ikorodu Division.

    Jakande referred him to Femi Alokolaro, a Lagos lawyer, who was coordinating Jakande’s — and Chief Awolowo’s — Committee of Friends in Lagos, the precursor to 2nd Republic Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN), that won power in Lagos, Ogun, Oyo, Bendel and Ondo (LOOBO) states.

    But no sooner than he joined the Committee of Friends than he became one of the brain boxes of that spectacular 2nd Republic Jakande government. He was that government’s first SSG. This biography also opened an intimate window into that government’s policy thrust.

    Indeed, that Basorun inevitably was made “secretary” to almost all organizations he belonged to — Lagos-wide; and in his native Igbogbo, where he has amassed tremendous community value — underscores his unstinting and meritorious service: Jakande’s SLG, secretary to the Ikorodu Division arm of Committee of Friends; and to umpteenth Igbogbo development unions: cooperatives, community banks, etc.

    But despite the Jakande link, Basorun joined the PRIMROSE — People Resolved Irrevocably to Maximizing Resources of State for Excellence — anti-“Baba sope” [the patriarch has decreed] rebellion, against the Jakande order, in 1991.

    Paramole is as much about the personal, political, community and spiritual history of His Eminence, Olorunfumi Basorun, spiritual head of The Gospel Church of C & S, Orile-Iganmu, Lagos; as it is about the formative history of CBN and a whistle-stop history of Political Lagos, from the 2nd Republic (1979-1983) till date; and the dynamics of Igbobo’s development — at least from the subject’s agile eyes.

    It’s a treasure everyone curious about Nigerian political history must have.

    Quote: “Paramole is as much about Olorunfumi Basorun, as it is about the formative history of CBN and a whistle-stop history of political Lagos from the 2nd Republic”